Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

Figure 71. Strangers on a Train
The same element (a train) is also particularly resonant in another of Hitchcock’s
noir film, Shadow of a Doubt. Shadowy motives underlie all the proceedings, from the
double-edged meaning of the title to the train that pulls up from a dark shadow which
engulfs Young Charlie (Teresa Wright), as if visually telegraphing what is going to
happen. Moreover, the train platform evokes idyllic America, and the smoke coming out
from the locomotive gradually anticipates the other side of its nature to reveal a darkness
beneath. Other noir films analysed so far, like Double Indemnity or Pitfall, offer a
depiction of a harsher underlying reality of post-Depression America amid the stylised
dialogue and acting. I wish to return here to the notion of noir auteurism described in the
previous section. These specific initial scenes function as “an introductory coda sequence”
in which we are provided with a literary exegesis of the action as it might appear in the
script, and then as a series of shots. This uniqueness of the director’s technique privileges
the visual image over the written word, and shows characteristic innovation in cinematic
stylistics from Hitchcock.
The passing of time is similarly cadenced with other meanings, that of superstition,
for example, in Scarlet Street. When J.J Hogarth reaches Christopher and hands him a
cigar, Christopher rejects it as he does not smoke but essentially reacts to it being the third
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